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CVE-2026-12046

Missing Authentication for Critical Function: Is CVE-2026-12046 real, exploitable, or a false positive? Here's the community verdict.

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signals

public sources

Exploited in wild
Not listed
CISA KEV
Public exploit
None known
Metasploit/EDB/PoC
Base severity
9 Critical
CVSS
Exploitation prob.
0.7%
FIRST EPSS
Weakness
CWE-306 · Missing Authentication for Critical Function
CWE

High CVSS base score, but low real-world exploitation probability (EPSS). Likely less urgent than the score implies.

baseline read

auto · not a community verdict

Officially disputed

The CVE record itself is disputed or rejected upstream — a strong candidate for a false positive in scanners. Confirm with a verdict.

Based on NVD record status

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CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Two state-mutating endpoints in pgAdmin 4's SQL Editor blueprint -- DELETE /sqleditor/close/<trans_id> and POST /sqleditor/initialize/sqleditor/update_connection/<sgid>/<sid>/<did> -- were the only routes in the module missing the @pga_login_required decorator. Both reach a pickle.loads sink on session['gridData'][<trans_id>]['command_obj']: the close endpoint via close_sqleditor_session(), and update_sqleditor_connection via check_transaction_status(). In server mode these endpoints were reachable without any authenticated pgAdmin session. The defect is a missing-authentication-on-critical-function (CWE-306) wrapper around a deserialization-of-untrusted-data sink (CWE-502). Exploiting it for remote code execution requires the attacker to also forge a server-side session file whose gridData entry contains a malicious pickle payload, which in turn requires both (a) knowledge of pgAdmin's Flask SECRET_KEY (no chain to leak it is described here -- the attacker must already possess it) and (b) write access to pgAdmin's sessions/ directory on the host. Neither precondition is granted by this defect on its own. When those preconditions are met from another channel (misconfigured deployment, prior compromise, leaked configuration), the missing auth gate is the final hop that turns an existing partial compromise into unauthenticated code execution in the pgAdmin process -- and, by extension, on the host under whatever account runs pgAdmin. Fix is a one-line @pga_login_required decorator on each of the two endpoints, matching the convention used by every other route in the module. The is_authenticated / MFA chain now runs before the trans_id is dereferenced, so an unauthenticated request is rejected before reaching the deserialization path. The defect is server-mode only. In DESKTOP mode pgAdmin's before_request hook re-authenticates DESKTOP_USER on every request, so no endpoint can be exercised in an unauthenticated state and no auth decorator (or its absence) is meaningful. The accompanying regression test mirrors the attacker's path -- harvests an X-pgA-CSRFToken from GET /login and replays it against both endpoints -- and self-skips outside server mode for that reason; it is wired into the existing server-mode CI workflow alongside the data-isolation tests. This issue affects pgAdmin 4: from 6.9 before 9.16.

References

NVD MITRE CVE.org

Published

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Field notes & remediation

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  • 0
    Field note · TruePositive EditorialCurated

    This scores high on paper (CVSS 9) but the real-world signal is low. It is not in CISA KEV and no public exploit was found, and near-term exploitation looks unlikely (EPSS about 1%). Verify your own exposure before treating it as urgent. It is reachable over the network with no authentication and no user interaction, which is the most dangerous profile. Not an emergency for most teams, but patch it in your normal cycle and check whether the affected component is actually exposed in your setup.

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Related CVEs

Same weakness: CWE-306 · Missing Authentication for Critical Function.